Community Manager
Please be gentle... this is the 1st time I have ever done a story line that I have shared. My creative teen had much preparing to do so we could produce you a Christmas story line we hope you will enjoy.
High in the Mountains of Canada...... The Christmas Lodge.
After a trek so long that required a legal perusal of their passports and a prayer to the g o d s of four-wheel drive, the family finally arrived at the "Christmas Lodge" - a lodge perched so high in the Canadian Rockies that the oxygen was thin but the pine sap was thick.
Everyone knew Gramps needed glasses, he'd recently tried to start a conversation with a green mailbox, yet tradition dictated that he, and only he, was the official arbiter of the Perfect Tree. While the rest of the family ducked into the lodge to huddle around mugs of cocoa, Grams - who was currently vibrating from the cold insisted she was having a hot flash' - snapped at the group. "New plan! We split up. If you find a winner, just hoot like a confused owl. Gramps will wander over, squint at it until his retinas ache, and make the call." "It's tradition, or whatever," Molly barked, her breath forming a frozen cloud of annoyance. The family scattered into the woods like arctic escapees.
Rorie, currently vibrating on a sugar high from spiked cocoa and focusing like a hawk on a field mouse, was analyzing needles with the intensity of a diamond appraiser. Her Gramps drifted over, buoyed by the scent of pine and the secret joy of his own flask. "Sweetie, you're looking at that branch like your choosing which traits to give to your first unborn child," Gramps chuckled. "Perfectionism is a disease, balance is the cure."
Hours go by....
Suddenly, a series of erratic hoots echoed from the parking lot. Gramps emerged from the tree line, shouting, "Found it! It's by the truck! I'm going inside before my toes snap off!" Rorie ran over to see Gramps' "prize," and doubled over laughing. "Grams," Rorie gasped, pointing toward the parking lot. "Gramps picked one. It's....well, it's over there."
Grams see's the three-foot-tall, shrub that Gramps had clearly mistaken for a sequoia and just couldn't resist saying, "well.... looks to be a bit short-sited of him! Myrian, Let's get the one I picked out." As laughter echoed through the pines, Myrian felled the tree Grams found and dragged it to the truck.
On the back section of the lot, Riley, Molly's husband, trudged through a snowbank, looking less like a jolly woodcutter and more like a man reconsidering his life choices. "Riley, for the tenth time," Molly groaned, "Why can't we just go to a garden center like normal citizens? We could buy a pre-lit, non-allergenic, plastic masterpiece that doesn't require a mountaineering permit and a tetanus shot!" "Because, dear, then we wouldn't have the frostbite to remember it by, right Rorie?" Riley exclaimed as Rorie, his youngest daughter approached. He and Molly steer Rorie back toward the lodge's fireplace, "Well baby girl, says Riley, "... this color doesn't do you justice at all!",
When Riley and Molly emerged from the warmth of the lodge, they found two trees waiting. Molly looked at the magnificent fir, then at the sad little shrub that represented her Father-in-law's stubborn pride. Molly smiled, "It's the thought that counts. We'll take both and tell Gramps his is the 'indoor accent piece'," as they hoist the big tree on the truck and as they put the tiny one up one the roof of the truck, Molly surmised, "Assuming it survives the ride home without being mistaken for a windshield wiper."
It was a very lovely Christmas story of their search for the perfect Christmas tree! 💗🎄It was sweet that Gramps was the traditional official decider of the tree to be chosen each year, and that in the end both his and Gram’s choices were taken home❤️The family had lots more fun doing this (although the weather was quite chilly! ) than if they had bought it in a store 🙂
